


We'll Outshine The Stars

by joelkanitz



Category: All Time Low (Band), SAINTE, We Are the In Crowd
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Fluff, F/M, Marriage Proposal, Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-10 03:27:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12902961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joelkanitz/pseuds/joelkanitz
Summary: Evan always has the best Christmas lights in the whole street, but this year, it’s especially important that he make them perfect.pairing:tevan (tay jardine/evan kirkendall)disclaimer:ain't my boys. title to carry me home by we are the in crowd.mibba version





	We'll Outshine The Stars

**Author's Note:**

> so this was originally posted to tumblr as evan/oc several years ago but i deleted it from there and i wanted to repost it… but i hate writing oc so i changed it to tay jardine. i’ve always been curious about a tay/evan fic because of that one super-cute selfie they took together, lol. and i hear his now-wife is a nasty person, but that’s none of my business. anyway. i think this works pretty well as a tevan fic! and i realise that ship name will never catch on. i’m probably the only person that will ever write this pairing and i doubt i’m ever going to do anything else with it apart from this one not-very-good ficlet, but i digress. let me know if you liked this! merry christmas.

“Evan? Baby? What are you doing?” Tay calls, staring up at her boyfriend on the roof.

Yes, the roof.

Evan was surrounded by Christmas lights, wires wound over his shoulders and trailing down the house and just generally looking like a big disaster. An accident waiting to happen, if one were to ask Tay.

He jumps at the sound of Tay’s voice, clearly too engrossed in fixing the lights to have heard her step out of the car and close the door just seconds ago.

“Oh, God! You’re home from work already?!”

“Uh, yeah, it’s… it’s seven-thirty, that time that I usually get home from work?” Tay raises an eyebrow quizzically, even though there’s no way Evan would even see that from so high up.

He frowns and looks around at the sky, as if he hadn’t noticed it before.

“It’s dark,” he calls down, sounding confused.

“Yeah, that happens early in the winter, remember? Evan, it’s been snowing for half an hour, come inside! How long have you been fixing those lights?”

“Hours! Don’t look at them!”

“Why not?” Tay laughs. “You’re being silly, get down from there.”

“No! I always have the best Christmas lights in the whole street, every year! I can’t stop until they’re perfect!” he shouts back, looking a tad stressed.

“But you can fix them tomorrow, come on! You’ll freeze, why is it so important you do it tonight?”

Evan sighs and looked defeated, slowly beginning to climb down his ladder. He knows his girlfriend is right -- it is freezing, and he’s hungry, and tired, and sore, and his fingers are numb. He really just wants to have some soup and curl up in bed. But he can’t help but be a little disappointed. He almost manages to get down from the roof without incident, too. It’s only when he gets to the bottom that disaster strikes. One foot on solid, snowy ground, he slips and falls, landing heavily on the outdoor switch.

Suddenly, the entire front of the house lights up, practically blinding Tay, and she stumbles back, shielding her face.

“Evan, what the hell?! Don’t you think you went a little overboard this year?!” she cries, blinking and waiting for her eyes to adjust.

Evan scrambles to his feet, waving his hands wildly and almost screaming in her ear. “Don’t look at them! They’re not perfect yet, you can’t look! Stop looking, shut your eyes!”

“Evan! What is it?” Tay shoves his hands away, staring at the lights in fear that he’d arranged them into a penis shape or something. It wouldn’t entirely shock her, knowing what he and the other All Time Low guys were like sometimes. But they were spelled out into words, though it made no sense. “Ill you mame…?” Tay reads out.

Evan sighs and lets his head hang, reminding her somewhat of a wilted flower.

“They were supposed to be perfect but I can’t make them go right,” he mumbles sadly. “The letters keep falling down or just not looking like letters and it’s stupid, it was a bad idea.”

Tay bites her lip sympathetically, rubbing his back. “Well, hey, what were they supposed to say? Maybe I could help?”

He looks up, almost tearful, and Tay’s heart clenches at the sight, but she stays quiet while he digs something out of his pocket; a little piece of white paper, that he slowly unfolds and hands to her.

It’s a sketch of their house, with the lighting on the roof, and all over the windows… and on the front of the house, lightly written, were the words, “Will you marry me?”

Tay looks up at him with her mouth hanging open. “Evan…?”

“I wanted to write it with the strings of outdoor lights but they kept collapsing and looking stupid and I’ve been out here for hours and I can’t feel my hands and I just really wanted it to be perfect for you, because you’re perfect for me and I screwed it all up and I don’t have any other ideas and this wasn’t even a good one, I was just stuck and I know we both love the holidays so I thought I could make them extra special but everything’s ruined and it was supposed to be fun and happy for you to come home to because I didn’t want to give you your ring until Christmas Day and–,” he stops himself rambling to cover his eyes and rub at the bridge of his nose, seemingly holding back frustrated tears.

His poor fingers looked blue from the cold. He’d been trying so hard all day. Gently, Tay pulls his hands away from his face and holds them tight, trying to warm them up.

“I don’t care that it’s not perfect,” Tay whispers, grinning to him. “You went to all this trouble and– and it’s just beautiful. We’ll fix them together, tomorrow, and take a picture and hang it on the wall and it’ll be even better than you imagined. I love it, Evan. It’s the best idea in the world. You’re perfect for me too, you know.”

He sniffs lightly, eyes wide. “Really?"

"Really. And by the way – yes.”

“Yes?” he repeats, a smile making its way slowly onto his face.

“Yes!” Tay shouts.

He picks her up and spins her around and around, snow falling steadily all over them. Tay feels like she’s in the middle of the most cliche Christmas movie scene and it really is perfect.

They stumble into the house together and Tay bundles her new fiance in blankets so that he doesn’t get frostbite.

“Hot chocolate?” she offers, kissing his nose after having pushed him down onto the sofa and insisting he take a damn break already.

“Yes please,” he grins up at her, looking stupidly excited still.

Secretly, Tay really wants to leap around and squeal into a pillow, but she could wait until she was alone for that. Because holy fuck. She’s engaged.

“You’re so adorable, you know,” she informs Evan instead, brushing snow out of his hair. “Just… the absolute cutest.”

“How so?”

“You got all upset about the light display and– and, well, no matter how lop-sided and misspelled it can get, I would’ve always said yes.”

Evan looks as if he might cry again. “I love you so fucking much.”

“I love you so fucking much! We’re getting fucking married, Evan!” Tay yells, losing all her cool and jumping on the spot.

Alright, so maybe she loves him enough to let him see her freak out. Just a little bit.

But really, how could she have said no to a marriage proposal up in lights?


End file.
